RBD19 - The Return of Big Brother

[Sirp]

Well he did get 67 gold, not 10!

But yeah, it might be time to start giving him something that's seriously meaningful to us. 6 groups of slave workers huh? Complete with the finest women of China for his harem perhaps? He is getting to be a big boy now and does deserve big-boy gifts.

Us giving him workers would also really help compensate for the AI's lack of worker-building; it'd be a good way to make sure he's a real world power.

-Sirp.

 

[voodoocat]

Don't go too crazy.. he's not that big of a boy. There's no doubt he's growing up but I think he's a little young for a harem.

 

[Speaker]

Little boys who get 6 slaves for their birthday invariably use their Immortals to carve up their older brother's cities. Got it, by the way.

 

[Sullla]

Keep in mind that we were researching in despotism, and our income was commonly 0gpt or negative. We couldn't exactly afford to give out large chunks of moolah under those conditions without going bankrupt. Now that we're in a republic, we should be able to shower Little Brother with some better stuff.

Map in 50AD:

 

[Speaker]

IT- MM Nanking to grow in 3 and build temple in 5. Switch Tientsin to Granary from Temple. Granary will finish in 8, with growth in 9. Borders expand at Uruk. I really hope those Immortals are not headed toward our cities. We have absolutely no hope of defending ourselves against them.

70AD (1) France and Egypt now have Engineering. I dial up our little bro and ask what he would want for it. He only requires Spices, our WM, 11gpt, and 580 gold. Thanks X-Man, that will work just fine. Bis gives his WM, 50 gold and 7gpt, Toku gives 18 gold and 2gpt. I hold off on trading to Cathy and Hammy because they only offer 5 and 30 gold each. MM Beijing for more efficient growth. Our little bro now has Invention as well but will not trade it. MM Nanking for more efficient growth.

90AD (2) Canton Aqueduct => Granary. Tsingao Temple => Marketplace.

IT- Our little Bro builds the Hanging Gardens in Gordium. How sweet. I didn't even know X-Man liked gardening.

110AD (3) Hangchow Temple => Pikeman. War is imminent with Russia due to our little brother's cute little aggression. We should have our border cities defended. Our little bro now has Theology. Don't know how he got it so fast. Ah, it seems that Cathy researched it and then traded it to X-Man for Invention. Joanie has it as well. A brokerage opportunity presents itself, but the price is a bit too high. I don't really want to buy Invention @3rd at this point.

IT- Babylonians start Leonardo's Workshop. Russians start Sun Tzu's and Leo's. French start Sistine.

130AD (4) Beijing Horseman => Horseman. Nanking Temple => Horseman. Chinan Worker => Temple.

150AD (5) I still hold off on Ivention and Theology.

IT- X-Man starts Leo's.

170AD (6) MM Nanking, Xinjian, Hangchow, and Beijing for more efficient growth. Dyes and 29gpt deal expires with X-Man, so I ask what he wants for Invention. I am a little unsure of the rules here. They say that if we need a resource, and our little brother has it, we must trade with him. It also says that if we have a tech that he does not have, we must off it to him. It does not, however, say that we must get all of our technology from him. Proceeding under this understanding, I trade X-Man 33gpt, dyes, and 418 gold for Invention and then turn around and trade Invention to Cleopatra along with 2gpt, for Theology. I then trade theology to Bis for 4gpt and 70 gold and no one else has much of anything to trade. I apologize if I misinterpreted the rules, but to deprive ourselves of brokerage opportunies doesn't make sense to me.

190AD (7) Beijing Horseman => Pikeman. Nanking Horseman => Horseman. Hangchow Pikeman => Granary. Granary should be rushbought in 4 turns. Macao Worker => Temple. X-Man has Chivalry. We will finish it in 25 turns. Actually, since Bis lacks Iron, I trade him one of our spares for Chivalry, which he has also discovered/bought. Cleopatra offers 10gpt and 29 gold, and I take it. It is a shame to waste all those turns of our scientist, but it would be a bigger shame to wait 25 more turns, especially since we got it for free (more or less). If again I am misinterpreting the rules, and should be going to X-Man for tech, please tell me. The rules are not clear. I put the scientist to work on education.

210AD (8) Oops Tblisi goes into disorder. That city is so far away, I didn't pay it any attention unless its worker had to move. Tientsin Granary => Temple. Tatung Temple => Barracks. Palace expands and gets a nice walkway. I upgrade two Horsemen to riders in preparation for the upcoming war with Russia (and because we are making 81gpt). MM Canton for more efficient growth. X-Man now has gunpowder.

IT- Our little bro demands our TM and 22 gold. Sure thing little brother, whatever you want. X-Man has 24 Immortals currently in our territory, plus a handful of assorted units. This really goes to show how stupid the AI is. Rather than attack us, or Babylon, who are right next to him, our little bro has spent 20 or so turns moving his slow units all the way across our territory to get to Russia.

230AD (9) Canton Granary => Marketplace. Minsk Worker => Barracks. Forbidden Palace finishes in Xinjian, which starts a Marketplace. Our income is up to 111gpt.

250AD (10) Beijing Pikeman => Rider. Tblisi worker => Barracks. MM Beijing for more efficient growth. For X-Man's birthday, I give him a extra special gift of $50 to aid the war effort. He has not yet declared on Russia, although his units have entered Russian territory at Riga. I have left two Riders near Shangtung with movement still left, and a horseman near Riga with movement left, for the next player to decide what he wants to do with them. All in all, a pretty uneventful turn. The entire world is at tech parity, with Persia ahead by Gunpowder. We lead the histogram with 813 pts, and our little brother is second at 773. Russia is second to last at 611, and will probably be squashed pretty quickly. Good luck to the next player.

RBD19, 250AD

 

[voodoocat]

Will play and post tonight.

 

[voodoocat]

Preturn
Everything looks good.

IT: Kaifing builds aqueduct>barracks. Palace expansion.

260AD (01) - Nothing new. Just work the land.
IT: Nanking Rider>Rider. Tatung Barracks>pikeman. Ningpo harbor>library.
270AD (02) - Still no new techs learned
IT: Hangchow builds granary>barracks. Tsingtao Marketplace>Rider. Shanghai builds mp>harbor
280AD (03) - Same old
IT: Little brother is a tad annoying. Takes forever for him to march his little immortal toys through our living room.
Kaifeng builds Barracks>MP
290AD (04) - X sure values gunpowder. Wants basically all we that we have
IT: Beijing Rider>Rider, Chengdu Aqua>Library, Hangchow Barracks>Library
300AD (05) - Little bro has many friends. He has ROP with Russia, France, Babylon, and Egypt. Egypt has GP. Decide to go ROP with little bro. He only wants 16 gold and WM
IT: Germany offers to trade TM. OK. Xinjian builds MP>Pikeman. Paris completes sun tzu's. Little X builds Leo's
310AD (06) - X offers to take 944 gold and 7gpt for Gunpowder. He has chemistry too. 3 gunpowder in territory needs road. Trade gunpowder to Japan for gems, WM and 62gold. Tax rate 0% MM a couple cities and change a couple to temples. +211 gpt
IT: Nanking builds rider changes to cathedral. Tientsin builds Temple>mp. Tantung pikeman. Babylon builds sistine.
320AD (07) - Rush Temple to avoid disorder in Beijing
IT: Little bro wants to fight the French. Aww.. Beijing builds temple>rider, Shanghai Harbor>Rider
330AD (08) - Moving troops towards france. Declare war on sis Joan. She broke the head off of little x's GImmortal Joe.
340AD (09) - 3 riders on hills outside french borders. Hire entertainer in Nanking. size 12. Pay 368 for 2 temples. In old russian cities.
IT: 1 Rider and 3 temples built.
350AD (10) - Now seems like a good time for a GA. I left 2 riders with turns. move how you want.


http://www.civfanatics.net/uploads3/RBD19-350AD.zip

Ok, I got a tad confused last night.

 

[Sullla]

Little Brother has led us into his first war - with a civ on the other side of the world from him, of course. Got it, will try to help out Xerxes without crippling the French (I don't think there's any danger of Little Brother losing one of his cities).

 

[Speaker]

And I thought he was fighting Russia the whole time, but he actually wanted to fight France. That is so special.

 

[voodoocat]

Oops! I forgot to give little bro a birthday present

 

[Sullla]

(0) 350AD Voodoocat gave me a turn with several units still to be moved, and us just getting involved with Persia against France in war. Looks like Little Brother saw that Joanie was the #3 power on the histograph behind us two, and decided to knock her around a bit. Nice thinking! We will support Little Brother in his fight, but we are not going to capture a bunch of cities for him. He has to stand on his own feet, after all (and if we just killed everyone but Little Brother, this game would be too easy). No birthday present to X-Man at the end of the last turn? I will have to give him something "extra nice" this time.

Why are we running a scientist in Ningpo? He goes to work a tile for us. We are building way too many military units; it's not like we're actually going to try and destroy France here! For another thing, our defenders are worse than pathetic in most cities; we are running archers and warriors as defenders in our core cities. Is there a reason for this? We are more than strong enough to create non-paper defenders. I will focus on improving defense on my turn. Shanghai from Rider to Library, Tsingtao from Rider to Library. Xinjian is working on a Rider when it lacks even a barracks! This city, which has our FP, is defended by only a reglar warrior? We're tempting fate way too much here. It goes to a barracks for now, so it can build a defender for itself. Chengdu has no chance of winning the cultural fight against the Babylonian city it juts up against, and so it gets switched from a library to a much-needed courthouse. Why is Tblisi running an entertainer? Might as well let it grow, we did put a temple in it. Tientsin doesn't need an entertainer thanks to the GA commerce bonus, it goes back to working full tiles. Kaifeng doesn't need a change of production, but it is running +8 food/turn (!) That's some fast growth! Specialist in Paoting changed from a useless scientist to a taxman. Now done with domestic, on to foreign...

X-Man is gracious with us (hooray!) and is up Chemistry. I consider a military alliance with him against France, but decide that the 50g he wants from us to sign it would be a waste. Egypt is up Printing Press on us, as is Babylon, while Cathy is at parity with us. Joanie won't talk to us, Bismarck is behind by Gunpowder, and finally Tokugawa is up Printing Press as well. I really would rather be buying techs than researching at this point, but we are locked into researching Education right now, so I'd better continue the project. We will lose a lot of money is someone else discovers the tech before we do in 5 turns. Actually... we have 419g and are researching at -92gpt. We will not have enough money to complete research at this rate; I'll leave it as is in the hopes that we can pull back the slider when we get close to discovery. I don't like being this broke though; we will go back to cash when the tech is discovered. I take up a defensive posture with our Riders, so we can support attacks by Persia without actually conquering cities ourselves. There's some big Immortal SODs on the way, so this should be interesting!

(1) 360AD Between turns, a French knight charges up a hill, across a river, to kill one of our Riders (sigh). Moving workers, I notice some poor decisions. We have one or two workers clearing many jungle tiles all over the place instead of a few stacks of 4-6 clearing a few of them. We want our workers clearing jungle tiles together, not scattered all apart. This is a waste of worker turns; it's far better to clear out 6 jungle tiles one at a time on turns 3, 6, 9, 12, 15, and 18 than clear out 6 all at once on turn 15. I make some adjustments where I can to fix this. One worker is even clearing jungle on a tile outside our cultural borders! Good grief, I'm glad none of this silliness was going on in the Naked Vikings game, it could have been fatal there. And then a Rider gallops past on a Goto order... I'm going to have a talk with you voodoocat about succession game etiquette here. Please try not to do this in the future. Fortunately we can kick research down a notch without slowing the ETA, and are now only losing 44gpt.

In order to get forces up to Minsk, we are going to need a ROP with Russia. What? We don't have an embassy with Catherine? The ONLY embassy we have is the one I founded with Little Brother? Come on guys, we need to build embassies for moments like this! I found an embassy with Russia for 38g and sign a ROP for 11g + WM. Cathy is now polite. When we get out of deficit research, I will found more embassies.

(2) 370AD Quiet turn. I shuffle some more Riders up to the front; we can't really advance in support of X-Man until I get more units there. We have an excess spice, so let's give it to Little Brother. WM and 140g is your offer? We'll take it! Now if only your units would stop blocking up our roads...

(3) 380AD Uh-oh! Three French knights come out of Babylonian territory to threaten Chinan, defended by a horse. That's why we need to beef up our defense. Time to research Education drops to 1 turn... yep, just about everyone has it. We get it from Little Brother for 12g, and then trade it to Japan along with 326g and 19gpt for Chemistry. Well, we flushed a lot of money down the toilet there; let's stick to buying techs until we closer to the Industrial Age, ok? Even at 10% science, we could get Music Theory in only 30 turns.

(4) 390AD The French units threatening Chinan turn around and run back into the fog near Riga. OK, that's fine with me. Between turns I watch French and Persian units slugging it out in in the northeast. Now that we finally have some cash, I upgrade some of our vet spears to pikes. I send our excess warriors no longer needed for MP (or for defense) to our cities under cultural pressure to reduce flip chances.

(5) 400AD Persia signs Egypt to a military alliance against France. A French knight attacks and kills one of our Riders, fortified in a city across a river (Minsk) Can't get no luck from the number generator right now. Then the same 2hp knight kills one of our Riders on the defense. This does NOT make me happy. Sorry Little Brother, I'm trying to help but not getting anything from the game. I notice that Little Brother has a new monopoly tech this turn, Metallurgy. And the French have moved more knights towards Shangtung; am dealing with it.

(6) 410AD French knights go after Persian spears passing through rather than attack our units. Thanks Little Bro. I see something terrifying this turn: Persian CAVALRY! Little Brother or not, he has a monopoly on Metallurgy AND Military Tradition. Whew! And the stream of units passing through our territory continues non-stop. If X-Man ever stabbed us, we'd be in trouble. I use our money to found embassies with everyone except France, with whom of course we cannot since we are at war.

(7) 420AD Not much going on. Trade Chemistry to Catherine to pick up Printing Press in return. We have excess dyes, so I send them to Little Brother for whatever he wants - namely 20g + 6gpt.

(8) 430AD Even less going on. All is peaceful, if you can ignore the 25+ Persian units in our territory.

(9) 440AD Little Brother has captured Marseilles! [dance] We are moving our units to that area to make sure that he keeps it. Now that we are completing universities all over our civ (that's what I've been using the GA production for), we can start up researching on Banking, due in 4 turns at -105gpt. I wouldn't do this except for the fact that the no one except Little Brother is researching at all; must be due to the wars. Little Brother now has Metallurgy, Astronomy, and Military Tradition all as monopoly techs. He is kicking butt! All we have to do is keep pace.

(10) 450AD Yawn, another boring turn. Manging workers and production to get the maximum benefit from our golden age. X-Man gets a whopping 400g present for his birthday to make up for missing the one last turn.

I spent most of my turn building various city improvements; I was not going to waste our golden age production building Riders to fight a useless battle against France. All cathedrals on the map right now are bank prebuilds. It looks like we are beginning to pull away from the pack along with Persia, which is great news as long as Little Brother doesn't stab us. I've left 6 Riders between Minsk and Cherbourg; I was holding them there for when Xerxes tried to attack the city. Don't attack Cherbourg with just those units, as the odds of success are pretty low. Do what you can to support Little Brother but don't go nuts; we aren't trying to eliminate France, after all. I wish that he would just end the war so we could make peace and get this finished! Continue building for the most part and take it easy. At least I managed to upgrade our defenses significantly; we have pikes everywhere now.

RBD19 450AD

 

[Sullla]

Xerxes is doing even better than expected; our one concern at this point should be whether we've "created a monster" and Little Brother will turn on us. He's certainly pulling away from the other civs in tech. We may want to start building for some wonders as well; there is no cascade at the moment.

T-Hawk <<< UP NOW
Sirp <<< on deck
Speaker
voodoocat
Sullla

 

[voodoocat]

Well I must have done a goto on my last turn and not realized it was my last turn. It was only 1.5 turns away from its destination. I am full aware of SG etiquette. I don't use goto in SG's unless it will complete during my turn

I really would rather be buying techs than researching at this point, but we are locked into researching Education right now

We were on minimum research for education up until the GA started. I only adjusted the slider to see how fast we would discover it. I then forgot to switch it back. Sorry about that.

On the issue of workers:

I'm not in the habit of stacking workers to clear jungle like that. I've always used them as single workers.

 

[T-hawk]

Got it, will play once I set my computer up again (don't ask; I'm on a P166 laptop right now) which should be tomorrow; Thursday at the latest.

On the issue of workers: Actually, it is more efficient to spread the workers out to clear jungle. Each worker spends a turn to move into the unimproved jungle square. If one worker clears the jungle, that's 25 worker-turns (non-industrious.) If six workers clear the jungle, that's 31 worker-turns. That's actually a bigger hit for an industrious civ (us), since the worker time spent moving into the jungle is a bigger proportion of the total worker time involved.

It depends on the situation. If a city is stuck enough to be working uncleared jungle tiles; pile on the workers and get it cleared ASAP. If the city has enough decent tiles to work, you can spread out the workers and get the entire job done a bit sooner.

 

[Sullla]

Also on workers: I know it's more efficient in terms of pure worker turns to cut down stacks of jungle using only one worker at a time. But using stacked workers allows you to get useful tiles into play faster, which is why in most situations I would not put solo workers onto clearing jungle duty. It's the same reason why you generally wouldn't railroad your territory by putting one worker on each tile to be railed; sure, you lose some worker turns by stacking them, but the extra turns of increased food/shields more than make up for it. Same deal with jungle clearing in most cases. Of course there are always exceptions to any rule, and in this case it may have been more efficient to have solo workers clearing jungle tiles.

We were on minimum research for education up until the GA started. I only adjusted the slider to see how fast we would discover it. I then forgot to switch it back. Sorry about that.

OK, an honest mistake on researching Education so early makes more sense. Let's just hope that no one makes a slip like that in the future!

 

[T-hawk]

Actually, you don't lose worker turns stacking them for rails if you do it right. The workers can all enter the square and start railroading it on the same turn, since it'll already have a road. But for jungle it still stands - if you don't need the tiles cleared right away, spreading out the workers gets the entire job done sooner.

 

[Sirian]

25 turns is a long time, during which unexpected hostilities can lead you to have to stop and move a worker. The potential loss of all that time and all those worker turns has actually bit me often enough that I almost never go with less than two workers into the jungle, preferably three or four.

By the time you are clearing jungles, you ought to have enough workers that a worker turn here or there is not an issue, while getting rid of the darn jungle quickly is. Disease risk, getting tiles into use, getting roads through the area, finding out if you have any BG tiles under there... you ought to have enough workers to get to it, not be riding the line of "just enough workers to keep up with our immediate needs". You can almost never have too many workers!


- Sirian

 

[Sirp]

Yeah but we're an industrious civ, so it's only 12 turns for us; I think that's an acceptable amount of time. For an non-industrious civ, I'd probably use at least 2 workers.

-Sirp.

 

[T-hawk]

Anyways, here goes.

We're in Golden Age, cool. I think Xerxes also got his golden age at the same time, with an immortal against France, which would be how he got that far ahead in tech.

As for France, I really don't think Xerxes needs a whole lot of help. I'll attack units out in the open, and pillage French resources, but I don't think we have any need to attack French cities, nor would doing so gain us anything. (Marseilles with the wines would be nice to have, but Little Bro won it fair and square.)

I pay to investigate Marseilles to check on two things: one, yes, Xerxes is in Golden Age; and two, he doesn't have Marseilles hooked up by road. I'm going to divert our workers to hooking it up for him - that means both of us can have wines!

Sulla said to think about a wonder. Yeah, let's go for one, how does Hangchow sound? Bach's, Smith's, and Copernicus are all available soon and useful.

=====

Apparently, we're helping Xerxes mostly by absorbing French counterstrikes for him. French knights kill three of our riders over the next few turns, while we kill a couple of them trying to retake Marseilles. Our riders reach and pillage one French horse resource, but they have another on the far side of their territory.

We get Banking. Xerxes still has Astronomy and Metallurgy, of course. If I ask him "what can I pay for Astronomy", he says Banking. If I say "make an offer for Banking", he says Astronomy, 380g, 24/turn. I think we're allowed to accept the latter, and I do. (We can't get Metallurgy for less than Banking plus 50/turn.)

Babylon's also got 48/turn to pay for Banking, and they offered less than that, so I take it. Nobody else has anything to offer.

Xerxes has Navigation already. We can research anything in 4 turns (in Golden Age); should we? Well, since we just traded Banking to X-Bro this turn, I don't think he'll be researching Democracy right now. I start that at max research; no, we won't use it, but it's guaranteed to get us Metallurgy from X, and will be worth plenty in trade to anyone else.

=====

X-man captures Toulouse in 490 AD. The next turn, he signs in Russia to join the alliance against France. I don't think our brother is going to stop until Joanie is gone.

There's some traffic problems developing around Shantung; X's and our units keep getting in each other's way. I assign a couple workers to build extra roads in the area to alleviate this.

In 510 AD, he captures Grenoble. According to the world map, EGYPT has also gotten into the action; they've captured Chartres which is on France's border with JAPAN. Can't tell the players without a scorecard, but France is getting carved up fast. Egypt's capture deprives France of their last horses, too.

=====

Also in 520 AD, we've researched Democracy. Unfortunately, we're a bit stuck: Xerxes has Navigation, Physics, and Metallurgy, but the one he offers us for Democracy is Navigation (plus 80 gold/turn.) I'd rather get one of the useful techs. So I place Physics on the table on his side, then ask, and he wants Democracy. I hope that's okay by the rules (it's still quite a generous deal anyway.)

He immediately revolts; I wasn't sure if he'd do that while still in war. This gives us a window to research another tech before he can research any. I pick Theory of Gravity, which we should then be able to trade for Metallurgy.

Nobody else in the world has anything to offer for Democracy, and most still lack even Astronomy.

Also in 520 AD, JAPAN joins the global alliance against France.

Also in 520 AD, Xerxes razes Cherbourg. Um, what do the rules say about lending our brother help in war, if we can't keep up with his rampage? I do have three cities building riders (Canton, Beijing, and Tsingtao), but they're getting stuck in the gridlock going through Shantung.

And Egypt has conquered a second French city over in the east.

=====

540 AD: our workers have hooked up Marseilles for Xerxes, so he's got wines for himself and we can buy some. We pay his request of our treasury of 386 gold plus 7/turn, and drop our lux rate to 0% for an extra 75/turn income.

And this turn, Xerxes captures Paris. Wow.

550 AD: Our Golden Age will end at the end of this turn. According to the domestic advisor, we could get Theory of Gravity in 1 turn at 70% science, but that isn't right since we lose the Golden Age commerce boost. At 70% science, the tech would take 614 beakers. 50% science is 448 beaker production; that should stay safely above 300 when the GA ends for us to get the tech in 2 turns. (Since we have only 19 gold in the treasury, we run the risk of bankruptcy due to lowered cash production from the Golden Age ending if we leave the slider at 70%.)

Hangchow has Copernicus due in 3, which is wrong because of GA ending. Nanking is also building a Palace, wrongly listed also as finishing in 5. This wonder can be Bach's or Smith's or Newton's, whichever becomes available.

Persia came out of his anarchy this turn, but get this - went into MONARCHY. Um, a big whoops there on Xerxes' part. Looks like we'll get to be the research leaders from now on! I didn't build any banks, since I figured we'd be pushing ahead on research, and now we definitely will.

Tblisi is running two entertainers to keep it in WLTKD until it finishes the courthouse.

For his birthday, Xerxes gets not six, but three fine Chinese laborers! Yay, not socks! (Keep peeling workers off maxed size-12 cities. Xinjian and Canton are doing so this turn.)

http://www.civfanatics.net/uploads3/rbd19-550ad.zip

 

[Sirp]

ok got it.

I need a rules clarification here

I was under the understanding that if we say "What would you offer us for X?" or "What do you want for Y?" that we were under obligation to accept the deal no matter what. Am I mistaken here? On my previous turn, I was avoiding asking him such questions unless I was sure we'd want to do the deal.

-Sirp.